Kicks and Memories
by angelk647
Summary: "We can raise this baby the way we've always done things. We can do it together." Oneshot.


I wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the strangest feeling in my stomach. I sit up for a moment and listen to the soft tapping of rain on the window, the remnants of what had earlier been quite a violent storm. I can hear the hushed whisper of Peeta's breathing beside me. There's sweat beading on my forehead and my skin is clammy.

And then I feel it again, just a soft fluttering in my stomach, and I realize it's the baby kicking. The thought hits me like a freight train and then I'm stumbling to the bathroom, trying not to wake Peeta. I shut the bathroom door as quick as I can and flick the light switch; no power. The storm must have taken it out. I think about lighting a candle, but there's no time because suddenly I'm hanging over the toilet, heaving violently. At first I think of morning sickness, but I'm well past that stage. This is something else.

My body shakes as I heave again, but nothing comes up. I stay there for several minutes until the feeling subsides. Too weak and exhausted to make it back to bed, I stay leaning on the toilet, resting my head against the cool wall beside me. Thunder rumbles, distant and fading. Slowly I run my hand over my swollen belly, my heart still pounding wildly and my breathing shallow.

The door creaks open and the warm glow of a candle spills into the bathroom. I look up to see Peeta in the doorway, the candlelight turning his hair to glowing gold and lighting a fire in his tired eyes. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing, I just felt sick. I didn't mean to wake you." I turn my gaze away from him and attempt to slow my breathing.

"Katniss." Peeta sets the candle on the sink and sits down on the cold tile floor next to me. The bathroom isn't all that big and in the dark his presence seems to take up most of the room. He reaches for my hand and I let him take it, but other than that I don't move. "Katniss, you know you can wake me for anything."

"There's nothing you could have done," I say with a shrug. "Besides, you're exhausted. You need sleep."

"So do you. Come on, let's get back to bed."

I lean my head against the wall again and close my eyes. "You go ahead. I'll be there in a minute."

He doesn't move. Instead he shifts around so that he's behind me and pulls me against his chest. "Katniss, what's wrong?"

This simple gesture and the softness of his words cause a lump to form in my throat, which is just as well because I don't know what to say to him. How do I tell him how I feel about the baby growing inside me? How do I tell him my fears of being a mother, of raising a child? That I worry I will drift away and be as absent as my own mother, or I'll be as cold and unloving as Peeta's? But mostly, how do I tell him that the kick fluttering in my stomach scared me so much that it made me sick?

We sit there on the floor for a long moment, with Peeta lovingly smoothing his hand through my hair, patiently waiting for me to talk. Finally, I turn my face against his shoulder and take a deep breath.

"The baby kicked."

I can't see his face, but I can just tell he's beaming. He was like that all along; the first time I came to him and showed him how my stomach had started rounding out with the baby, you would've thought I'd given him the most precious gift in the world. He went around humming for the rest of the day and made me cheese buns to go with dinner. I didn't tell him about the knot that had formed in my stomach when I saw that baby bump.

"That's wonderful," he breathes against my hair, and I can practically hear the smile in his voice. Sometimes I wish I could be like Peeta, so amazed by the small joys of life, so enraptured by every little moment. But I haven't been that way in a long time; may I never was.

When I don't agree with him, Peeta gently grips my chin and turns my face up to his. His blue eyes search mine, and I will him to understand what's going on inside me. He's usually pretty good at discerning what I'm feeling, even when I'm not entirely sure myself. This time is no different. "You're scared."

"I've been scared all along," I say. It's true. It took me so long to agree to have kids, even knowing how badly Peeta wanted them. I wanted to make him happy, but the thought of having children of my own terrified me in a way nothing else ever had. Even though the war is over, and the Hunger Games are long gone, there's still a part of me that is afraid of the world. I've seen it's most depraved horrors, faced them head-on. How could I bear to bring a child into such a place?

Of course, Peeta was there to remind me that it was all over, that the Games and the war only existed in my nightmares. That the world, while far from perfect, is growing and changing for the better. He told me that our child would thrive in this new world, and besides, he or she would have us no matter what.

When I finally agreed, I didn't really expect to be pregnant right away. I figured we had spent so long trying not to have children, it would take a while to go the other way. When the symptoms started showing up within a month, I panicked. Dreams of the Games, which I normally had only once in a long while, came back with a vengeance. I woke up almost nightly either screaming or shaking in terror, images of snarling mutts and blood-soaked tributes searing through my mind. I often woke Peeta with my thrashing, which I felt terribly guilty about. He never said anything. He just wrapped his arms around me, like he used to do on the train so long ago, and stroked my hair and hummed softly until I fell back to sleep.

Slowly, I began to accept the change happening inside me. The nightmares dwindled away. It helped when my morning sickness disappeared too, though I still get cravings for cheese buns more often than usual. Peeta is delighted by the continuous swelling of my belly. He hasn't started talking to it yet, but I suspect this is mainly for my sake. Despite myself, I was starting to settle in to being pregnant.

Until tonight, when the kick came.

With a shaky breath, I lean my forehead against Peeta's. "I guess it just...made it too real," I whisper. "There's a living thing inside me...a _baby. Our_ baby."

"Our baby," he repeats.

"I don't know how to do this Peeta," I whisper shakily. "I'm not made to be a mom. I've fought and killed and hunted and destroyed...how can I make something?"

Peeta chuckles softly. "Katniss, you're already making something. Your personality doesn't affect the forming of this baby. Right now all you have to do is make sure you're healthy. You're doing a wonderful job of that." He pulls away slightly to plant a kiss on my forehead. "And anyway, you're more nurturing that you think. You played a mother before, when yours was absent. And you did a wonderful job."

It's meant to be encouraging, and it is, but in that moment my heart throbs along the old scars as I remember the days of trying to be a mom to Prim. The days I had to hunt to keep us alive, trade to get what we needed, and tuck her in to bed at night next to our own motionless mother. I try to stop the memories but they just keep coming and my throat gets tight because they just remind me all over again that I've lost her. All these years later and it still hurts. I've healed and I've kept going, but deep inside I know I'll never get over losing Prim. And now I'm going to be entrusted with another small, innocent, helpless person whose life will depend on me.

I don't realize that I've started tearing up until Peeta reaches out and brushes one from my cheek. Then he presses me against his shoulder and lets me cry, and I cry for a long time. I cry for my fear of the future and fear for my child, left in my unqualified hands, and I cry for my sister, because she'll never meet my baby; but mostly I cry because I just need to. I need to release the storm of emotions swirling in my head and my heart and my stomach.

Peeta understands this; he just sits there with me, unmoving and solid, because this is what we do for each other. We become the rock when the other one is crumbling. It just so happens that I've been the one crumbling lately.

We sit there, in the dark bathroom in the flickering glow of the candle, with the rain pattering on the window, until my sobs have quieted to shuddering breaths. Only then does Peeta pull back and take my face in his large, warm hands.

"You're going to be a wonderful mother Katniss, I promise," he says, looking straight into my eyes. "We're going to do this together." He leans in and presses his lips firmly against mine in a long, slow kiss. Then he stands up, grabs the candle, and pulls me to my feet. Looping his arm around my waist, we make our way back to the cozy darkness of our bedroom.

I climb into my side of the bed while he blows out the candle. In the ensuing darkness I feel the bed lower as he gets in, hear the rustle of the blankets as he pulls them up. Then he reaches for me and pulls me back against him so that I can feel his solid arm around my waist, his warm breath on my neck.

"Go to sleep, I'm right here," he says.

With my eyes closed, I smile. "I know. You always are."

"And always will be." He yawns. "Goodnight, Katniss. I love you."

"I love you too, Peeta."

In less than a minute his breathing has slowed, and I can feel myself slipping in to sleep as well. Before I do, I think about what he said. I know he's right. We can raise this baby the way we've always done things. We can do it together.


End file.
